qotd: OECD: Health at a Glance 2015

OECD
Health at a Glance 2015
OECD Indicators

This 2015 edition of Health at a Glance – OECD Indicators presents the
most recent comparable data on key indicators of health and health
systems across the 34 OECD member countries. For a subset of indicators,
it also reports data for partner countries.

From the Executive Summary

Health at a Glance 2015 presents cross-country comparisons of the health
status of populations and the performance of health systems in OECD
countries, candidate countries and key emerging economies.

The key findings of this publication are as follows.

New drugs will push up pharmaceutical spending unless policy adapts

Life expectancy continues to rise, but widespread differences persist
across countries and socio-demographic groups

The number of doctors and nurses has never been higher in OECD countries

Out-of-pocket spending remains a barrier to accessing care

Too many lives are still lost because quality of care is not improving
fast enough

Health at a Glance 2015 (Read online version - 220 pages):
http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2015_health_glance-2015-en

Health at a Glance 2015 (links to PDFs of each section):
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2015_health_glance-2015-en

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Comment by Don McCanne

Opponents of health care reform frequently dismiss efforts with the
statement that the United States has the best health care system in the
world. We don't. This biennial report of OECD indicators provides
international comparisons with tables and graphs that can be very useful
in explaining why the United States needs to get serious with our health
care reform efforts. It is shameful that we fall far behind our peer
nations in so many of the crucial health indicators.

The second link above is particularly helpful since you can readily
select international comparisons on whichever topic you want, such as
infant mortality, overweight and obesity among children, international
migration of nurses, out-of-pocket medical expenditure, and so forth.

Fixing our health care financing system alone will not solve all of our
problems, but a single payer system would give us a much better
infrastructure on which to function.